Minimal Challenges: Process Music and the Uses of Formalist Analysis

Abstract

Critiques of formalist modes of musical analysis resemble critiques of certain types of minimal music. One ironic, if not downright paradoxical aspect of this parallel is that the sharpest attacks on minimal music have come from writers sympathetic to formalism. A reconciliation of sorts has been reached by formalist admirers of minimalism, for whom the music is a staging ground for reflexive methodological critique.

Keywords:

• Minimalism
• Formalism
• Analysis
• Methodology